Archive for senator

Well, the Rube that roared is trying anything to keep him relevant in the 2016 GOP Presidential campaign that's looking at him with longer and longer odds. He's fallen from poster child for the New GOP to dimwitted doormat as other nationally unelectable Republicans like Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz zoom past him in early polls.

When in trouble, punt. And that's what the junior Florida senator has done. While the rest of the world is applauding the CVS move to stop selling cancer sticks, AKA cigarettes, Rubio is not. The pharmacy chain justifies their move because they feel it's hypocritical to sell the cause of illness and sickness while they pride themselves on being a healthy place. They're a one-stop shopping site for cures and potions for what ails you.

CVS, one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains, said Wednesday that it will stop selling cigarettes at its 7,600 locations in an expensive but calculated bid to boost its image as a full-fledged health-care provider rather than a simple purveyor of greeting cards and shampoo.

Almost unanimous praise has been heaped on CVS for taking this stand. I say almost unanimous because not even world peace would be unanimous if the GOP had their way. So out of the darkness of ignorance and void of any human compassion come this Marco Rubio tweet--

Many of the same people applauding #CVS for not selling tobacco are ok with making it easier to buy and smoke pot. #makesnosense

So the Metrosexual Latin Lothario doesn't get it and is angered that CVC won't be selling cigarettes because he doesn't see the connection to cigarettes causing illness/death and drug stores curing/preventing it. Yet, he makes the leap to condemning those who approve the decision by lumping them together into a pro-pot grouping. That he understands.

This is quite a leap, even for a child, let along a serving senator. But even if you take that leap with him, there's a certain rationale that could be made. Twenty states currently allow for legal MEDICAL marijuana. Medical. For medicinal reasons.

If CVS wanted to become a legal distributor for cannabis, a better case could be made than for selling cigarettes. There's an apparent benefit for some to smoke weed. And the death rate hovers annually around zero for grass where it's thousands for cigarette use.

“We have about 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners helping patients manage chronic problems like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and heart disease, all of which are linked to smoking,” said Larry J. Merlo, chief executive of CVS. “We came to the decision that cigarettes and providing health care just don’t go together in the same setting.”

So serving the public's best interest, despite rather large estimated losses in cigarette sales has been deemed worth it to CVS. Again, from WAPO:

Executives said the move will cost the company $2 billion a year in lost sales. But they are gambling that abandoning smokers will help them strike more profitable deals with hospitals and health insurers — and appeal to growing ranks of customers newly insured under the Affordable Care Act.

Isn't it strange that a large company would be willing to make this move to protect the public and to serve the newly insured under the ACA yet an elected official from Florida with eyes on running this entire country would find this a bad move? It's not like Rubio has a stake in this, or maybe he does. Us.

Rubio is the same senator who put his name on a senate immigration bill that passed, and then immediately came out against it. Is this a man who would say or do anything just to get heard? Sounds like it to me. And that's not a presidential quality -- not in the least.

Poor Senator Rafael Cruz. He’s got no one to play with. His get-famous-quick scheme has taken a back seat to real news. His momentum hasn't sputtered, it’s petered out totally. No one wants to hear Raffy’s whining and even the Tea Party is getting tired of Teddy One-note, the dual-citizen from North of the 49th parallel.

Listen to his droning on about Benghazi. According to him, we've taken our eye off the ball. The real prizes are Benghazi and the IRS "scandals." He feels that’s where our attention should be – not on the hundreds or thousands of Syrians who were gassed. He’s not interested in the millions of Syrian refugees whose lives have been disrupted. After all, those are foreigners, not native born Americans like… Whoops – well, maybe he’d care about these refugees if they had dual citizenship.

Here’s Rafael, trying once again to become pertinent or relevant. He’ll take either, but seems to be neither.

Ted Cruz has made no secret about his land of birth -- Canada. Well, he hasn't kept it a secret lately.

A few weeks back, he released his Canadian birth certificate. He was born to dual-citizenship, something he knew from childhood. Something he repressed for years, and even thought that closing his eyes would make it go away. But his land of birth really isn't what makes his character. How he acts and what he does is the way to judge a (wo)man.

My problems are with his politics, not his citizenship. Character is the important issue.

So why has he not only hidden the fact that he has dual citizenship with Canada, but he's committed perjury while doing so? It seems that Rafael 'Ted' Cruz has lied on US federal forms. That's a federal crime, BTW.

Prior to entering the Senate, Cruz had a legal career that included stints as the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning and as an associate deputy attorney general in the Justice Department. Both government department's applications include questions about an individual's background.

Peter Kaplan, a spokesperson for the FTC, told TPM on Tuesday that the heads of offices at the agency undergo background checks through the Office of Personnel Management. The OPM has standard forms they use “government-wide for various employment and benefits program purposes.” On the OPM’s list of standard forms there are three questionnaires for jobs of various sensitivity; “national security positions,” “public trust positions,” and “non-sensitive positions.” All three of these questionnaires contain detailed sections on citizenship that ask applicants their “place of birth” and whether they have ever held “dual citizenship.”

Archived versions of the OPM website show these questions were included on all three questionnaires when Cruz first worked at the DOJ in 2001 and when he moved to the FTC later that year.

It seems that calls to Senator Cruz' office have not been returned requesting a comment on this. He has stated publicly a few weeks ago that he was going to renounce his Canadian citizenship which could take 8 months to complete. So this becomes a fun game of
"What did he know and when did he know it."

If Rafeal is to be taken at his word that he only recently found out that he was a dual citizen, this Harvard educated lawyer must be quite a simpleton. He would have and should have known just by being born in Canada that he was part Canadian by birth. To have gone all these years and not looked into it? I find that hard to believe. This man is known for being detail orientated -- impressive in his appearances as a lawyer in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Usually sidewalk shysters don't get to Washington to plead cases in front of SCOTUS.

So, either Rafael Cruz is: A - lying, B - stupid, C - eats Wheaties for breakfast, or D - all of the above. Though I'd like to go with D, I have a feeling that Raffy's been planning this presidential move for a while and he's just gotten caught with his pants down -- leaving A as the most likely answer.

Oh, if he did lie, it's a federal crime. He might be looking at 4 -8 years, but in the 'big house', not the White House.

If this commercial is any indication of the campaign Kentucky Attorney General Alison Lundergan Grimes is going to mount against Senator Mitch McConnell for his Kentucky senate seat, assuming he gets past the primary (no guarantees there), then I'm all for this genuine, down home and plain speaking woman. I hope her grandmother gets to go with her to Washington, too. They both will be a welcomed sight. Check out ALG's first campaign video. I think you'll agree that she is a force to be reckoned with: